Mayo Clinic sees the emerging field of big data analytics as a crucial strategy to defend and reinforce its standing as an elite medical institution, particularly as health reform efforts and federal belt-tightening change the way doctors get paid.

Millennials will soon outnumber baby boomers in the United States, and sometime this year they are expected to become a majority of the workforce. Suddenly, Maple Grove workplace consultant Sarah Sladek is in high demand.

Reliable, longtime volunteers, who were shaped by the Great Depression and WWII, are dying or getting too old to do the work. Baby boomers aren’t stepping in to fill their shoes — at least not in the same way.